Philips 150P2 15in LCD Monitor

Richard Price
10 September 2000

The really interesting feature about the new Philips 150P2 15" LCD monitor is that it can be rotated 90 degrees and display in portrait mode.

It has been a long time since I have seen a rotating monitor. They were common on Macs some time ago. It's a neat trick and very sensible. It's a lot easier to work on word-processing tasks in portrait mode. Even desktop publishing is easier when viewing an A4 page in "portrait" mode. It is also an ideal format for viewing web pages where a lot of side space is wasted and there is no need to scroll so much.

Connecting the plug and play monitor is simple enough. The monitor rotates on its base easily, but does have a few quirks. Separate software has to be installed to rotate the image on the monitor. Click on the icon, select rotate and the screen image rotates. The monitor is then physically rotated.

I found the pixels become more obvious with the screen in portrait mode and had to position it a little further away to avoid seeing the obvious horizontal lines on the screen.

Checking the settings in portrait mode showed that the display had changed from 1024x768 to 768 x 1024. Similarly 800 x 600 became 600 x 800 in portrait mode. There were also a few extra settings that were not there before --- like 864 x 1152 and 1024 x 1280 which crashed the system when I tried them.

The monitor supports 16M colours and has a resolution of 1024 x 768. I found the quality of the display very good. Although when working with graphics programs like PhotoShop I preferred landscape mode because I could get closer to the screen without feeling like I was looking at one of those kids 3D tokens you get in chip packets.

The software doesn't remember what mode it is in, so the computer always expects to be in normal landscape mode when booting up regardless of the screen position. Because of this, once or twice when rebooting after a crash the image was upside down.

Is this a fault in the software or a conflict with video drivers? The tendency these days is for very limited documentation making it difficult to pinpoint the problem.

These are quirks I can live with. What I found annoying was that the 90-degree display software that comes with the Philips 150P2 is a third party 30-day trial version.

According to the company web site it costs AU$49.95 (US) to buy.

Has Philips gone completely mad? Even a cheap modem or sound card comes with free software. You would think after forking out AU$1600 for a monitor that rotates the software would be included!

Fortunately the monitor does have a few other things in its favour. The power supply is built-in behind the screen, so there is no need to fumble around with AC adapters.

The monitor can also be clipped off the base and easily hung on a wall or attached to a wall bracket. This monitor weighs in at 5.4Kg and is only 61mm thick

The test monitor came with a neatly designed "Ergo" base with tilt, swivel and height adjustment. I would have preferred more height adjustment in portrait mode.

The monitor can accept both VGA and DVI digital video input.

There are also some optional extras. A protective cover, useful if the monitor is in a public area. A multimedia base with built in speakers and a Philips USB hub with four ports that slots into the base.

I wouldn't bother with any of them, but the monitor on its own is beginning to look more and more attractive even with that annoying reminder about trial version software every time the screen rotates!

I have recently been informed by Philips that the software for rotating the screen image is now included as part of the deal.

Price: incl GST is AU$1599
www.philips.com

By Richard Price, Editor, EnergyME.com

For information on getting a product reviewed email richard@energyme.com